What Is The Necronomicon?

Does The Necronomicon Really Exist?

Everyone who’s anyone has head of this dreaded and accursed tome, which is supposed to have deep magickal secrets hidden in its pages. What is the Necronomicon, really?

Throw a rock on the Internet, and odds are you’ll come across some site or another claiming that they have spells from the Necronomicon, or that their coven uses it, or that they know a curse that was retrieved from it.

It’s been in popular culture as the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in the Evil Dead series, it shows up in the Friday the 13th franchise, and there are at least nine published volumes that either claim they are the real thing, or are “based on” the cursed book.

And yet, most of the people who claim to use it don’t actually know what the book is, or if it really even is a book at all. Here’s the skinny on this terrible tome.

Introduction To The Necronomicon

The Necronomicon is the name of a fictitous book that contains the account of the Great Old Ones, entities from deep space who came to earth long, long before mankind was even conceived. It is primarily referenced in the works of the famous horror fiction author Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

In his mythos, the Necronomicon is so evil that reading portions of it might cause people to go mad. It was written, as the stories go, by “the Mad Arab Abdul Al-Hazred,” more than a millenia ago, and contains the secrets to summoning the Old Ones back to life, in particular the Great Cthulhu.

Lovecraft states countless times that his book is fictitious, and it showed up for the first time in history referenced in his story “The Hound” in 1924. It was never referenced before that, and was completely fabricated by the author for the purpose of having a plot point in his books.

Is The Necronomicon Really A Hoax?

That’s right – I’m sorry to inform you, but the paperback on the bookstore shelf with the glossy cover and the illustration of a black skull on the front is not a reprinting of some ancient book of power, nor is it a reprint of any even vaguely defined book at all.

All that book will be is an attempt to cash in on Lovecraft’s posthumous popularity in the literary world by catching the attention of the gullible.

If you want to read books which are actually ancient and which may actually have power and ways to summon old things, then direct your attention to the 15th century book Clavicula Salomonis, known in English as the Key of Solomon, and its later derivative work Clavicula Salomonis Regis, the Lesser Key of Solomon.

These books are actual grimoires that talk about typical Renaissance-style sorcery, and you’ll be certain to find more occult in one of those books than in a thousand copies of any book that claims to be the Necronomicon.